. . .Long before the documentary was completed, it was determined that the usual method by which the video would be disseminated through YouTube would not work in this case. Many of the members had been stung previously by having videos flagged or removed through claims of copyright or privacy infringement. YouTube is heavily invested in the DMCA (
Digital Millennium Copyright Act) implementation, having designed an automated system by which to prevent copyright violations.
One component of the system is built into YouTube’s uploading function. As videos are uploaded, they are screened for audio that matches anything within a massive database of copyrighted material. If a match is found, one of two things happens. Either the uploader is presented with the option of disputing the claim or accepting it as accurate, or YouTube simply rejects the video on the basis of it being a violation of their terms.
The second major component of their DMCA system involves the copyright owner making a claim against a particular video. In this process, the owner of the material flags the offending video and YouTube responds automatically by taking the video offline while notifying the video’s producer that a claim has been made. The video producer at this point must either accept the claim as accurate and forfeit the video or dispute the claim, at which time notice of the dispute is sent to the claimant.
The unfortunate side-effect of the overall process is that, during a 10 day period in which the claimant has to choose whether to take further action the video is offline.
As you might imagine this policy of allowing anyone to make a claim against any video is easily abused. The function largely favors claimants over producers of videos the claims are made against. As it stands, anyone can make a claim against any video to have it removed for a period of between 10 days and 3 weeks, and the uploader of the video has no recourse whatsoever. They are simply not afforded a means to legally challenge the claim aside from the initial dispute option. But this does nothing to prevent the take down of the video. It’s this concerning reality at the root of the next story behind the story.
As mentioned, the group chose not to upload their documentary to YouTube. After researching the options, it was determined that Vimeo would likely be the best home for the video. So, on November 30th it was uploaded to a newly established Vimeo account, a trailer was loaded to the group’s YouTube account and those of the participants. Despite there having been little hype in the time preceding its release, many people began to watch and the buzz was that people liked it.
Within less than 24 hours, Vimeo removed the video and sent notice that it was removed due to a violation of their terms. Here is the relevant text of that message…
Your video “We Need to Talk about Sandy Hook” has been removed for violating our Guidelines. Reason: Vimeo does not allow videos that harass, incite hatred or depict excessive violence.
If you haven’t yet seen the video, this might appear to be a legitimate reason for its removal. However, if you have seen the video it’s very unlikely that you’ll find the reason given to make much sense. There simply isn’t anything that could be construed as harassment or inciting of hatred. Not only is their not excessive violence, there’s no violence depicted at all. Therefore, it appears that Vimeo chose to remove the video for other reasons. I won’t begin to speculate what those reasons were and the group hasn’t bothered to inquire further into the matter. Both Vimeo and YouTube are notoriously steadfast in their take-down decisions and rarely, if ever provide detailed explanations for them.
Although the plan had been to load the video to a secondary host as back-up, that simply hadn’t been done when the primary source at Vimeo was removed. Being faced with a newly-released video now totally unavailable,
the decision was made to upload it to the group’s YouTube channel. Although it was predicted that it wouldn’t last more than a day or two, this seemed the quickest way to make the video viewable again. Concerned about and fully expecting it to be removed from YouTube, the group also scrambled to upload the video to Archive.org, which seemed like a suitable back-up source.
By this time there was a growing buzz across the Internet in places where conspiracies were discussed as well as matters of free speech. The group began to receive numerous requests through the simple contact form on its website for a copy of the video that people could upload to their channels both on YouTube and elsewhere. A completely unexpected phenomenon was showing its first signs when discussions of the take down by Vimeo was seen as unfair censorship. This generated more interest, the assumption being that for it to have been taken down so quickly what it contained must be bombshell material.
Although the matter of whether any material in the video constitutes being described as “bombshell” is relative, this notion did lead to increased interest. As the group struggled to ensure the video was viewable, considering the take-down of it at Vimeo to be a setback it was in no way a ruse by them to gen up interest through promoting a perceived notion of scarcity. This appears to have been an organic phenomenon.